Rahul to campaign for Nilekani in Bangalore

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will campaign Monday for party candidates Nandan Nilekani, Rizwan Arshad and C. Narayanaswamy contesting from the three Lok Sabha seats in Bangalore.

"Gandhi will address a huge public meeting Monday evening in the National College grounds at Basavangudi, a part of the Bangalore South constituency, to seek votes for all our three candidates, especially Nilekani who is his choice," a party spokesman told IANS late Sunday.

Arshad, who is the state unit's Youth Congress president, is contesting from Bangalore Central, while Narayanaswamy from Bangalore North.

Narayanswamy, who represented the seat over a decade ago as a Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) lawmaker, got selected through primary (internal election) the party held March 13.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won all three seats in the 2009 general elections, as it was in power in the state then.

"Gandhi will fly into Bangalore after addressing party rallies at Raichur in the northern region and Sirsi in the coastal region of the state during the day," the spokesman said.

Raichur, about 500 km from Bangalore, is a reserved constituency (for Scheduled Tribes) as the adjacent Bellary seat, where Rahul addressed April 4.

Infosys co-founder Nilekani is pitted against five-time winner Ananth Kumar of BJP in the Bangalore South, home to about 600 global IT firms, including Infosys, Wipro and scores of multinationals.

Not to be outdone, BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will also campaign for Kumar Tuesday in the high-profile Bangalore South seat and address young techies working in the electronics city.

"Modi will address an election meeting April 8 evening in the PES College grounds at Bommannahalli near the electronics city, which is part of Kumar's constituency," BJP spokesman S. Prakash said.

Modi will be on a whirlwind tour of the state during the same day to address election rallies at Koppal and Bagalkot in northern region and Mysore, about 150km from here.

A day later, Congress president Sonia Gandhi will visit Kolar and Mysore to campaign for party candidates and address election meetings.

Union Micro, Small and Medium Scale Industries Minister K.H. Muniyappa is contesting for the record seventh time from Kolar, a reserved constituency for the Scheduled Castes (SC), about 100km from Bangalore.

"We are hoping Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Bangalore April 11 or April 12 to address party's state unit leaders and workers and interact with the candidates," the party leader added.